What Askevar 2.0 has taught me…

Last year at some point, my husband decided he loved his paladin enough that he wanted a second one, so he rolled another one. Truth be told, he has a third one on this account, that he and my son play together, but we all consider it our son’s toon.

With a server full of toons and only one death knight permitted per server, I wasn’t able to do this. I also didn’t want to level one on another server where I’d have no friends and/or a guild that would expect time commitments I couldn’t fulfill as I’m quite dedicated to my ThoBro guild and guildies.

Along came SAN – Single Abstract Noun – the blogging community guild. They have raids – very fun times I hope to join in on when my schedule works but you do what you can. It’s a group of bloggers and blog readers… and anyone interested in blogging pretty much. Naturally, guild chat is always hopping. But as a guild of kindred spirits, it seems to function well on it’s own. It’s pleasant to be there – whether I want to be a chatterbox or just want to quietly grind on my own.

Suddenly, I had the perfect environment for me to level another dk. Real ID also meant that I could chat with my best friend whilst doing so [or while she is on her own alt server]. Originally I had planned to level a blood tank, but that got frustrating, so I opted to make Askevar 2.0 a strictly dps frost dual wield dk. She’s level 74 now as I did a leveling spurt during the fire festival but she’ll probably slowly creep to 80 from now on as I plan to try and instance on her once a day for badges [time permitting].

I’m excited over the prospect of improving my main’s dps. When my husband leveled a second paladin, his main’s dps offspec improved significantly. I also love knowing what I’m doing while leveling. I can focus on dpsing in an instance rather than have ‘oh what does this button do?’ moments. I not only know my rotation, but it’s in my muscle memory already.

I’m also learning some other valuable lessons. With Askevar 2.0, I’m not worrying over leveling cooking… or fishing… or first aid… or even professions at the moment. No fussing over achievements – though I’ll get her a title eventually. I’ll also eventually give her some gathering professions but for now I’m selling everything I get on the Auction House. It is truly amazing what people will pay for some of the random raw forms of food and minerals and whatnot.

I earned enough to buy regular flying in outlands and I have the money for Northrend flying once I hit 77. Yeah, I’m a spoiled brat that forgot that normal new 70s can’t have flight right away… You have to have an 80 to buy the BOA book. Bummer. [Yeah, I’m a trust fund alt person].

And yes, before you ask, the SAN guild dk I’ve got is named Askevar. I wasn’t expecting to level the toon when I created her otherwise I probably would have named her something else. She looks just like my main, save her hair color – which I changed to white.

So anyway, the point I’m going to make as both Venoym [my hubby] and my best friend Endyme [of Unholy Randomness] have been telling me is that rolling a second one of your class can teach you a lot.

PS: If you want two dks on a server, you can transfer one to a server you already have one on – it works so I hear.

4 thoughts on “What Askevar 2.0 has taught me…”

I really think that’s why it’s been such fun to level Endyme 2.0. I know what I’m doing. I mean, most of the time when you’re leveling up a toon, it takes time and experience to figure out the ins and outs of the class/spec. So you’re prone to ‘doing it wrong’ and getting flustered (as I do on my disco priest), not gemming ideally, that sort of thing. But not so on Endy 2.0. I know my class. I feel confident that I can better handle situations calmly that might tend to rattle a newbie.

It’s quite an adjustment in that I’m regressed from what I’m used to. Endy the first has 37k-ish mana fully buffed. Endy 2.0? I can crack 8k if I have a few buffs going on. Big Endy is dripping in purples, has all sorts of nifty tricks and talents to help her be even better. Endy 2.0’s gear isn’t exactly uber, and I don’t have all that stuff I’m used to having, so sometimes in a ‘oh crap’ moment, I’ll move to click an ability I don’t have, or just curse the fact that I don’t have Every Man for Himself (2.0 is a space goat) or Divine Plea to help regen mana (because PuG’s just do NOT wait for you to drink, oooh no).

Leveling 2.0 has helped me appreciate how well Endy the first has it, that’s for sure. I’m not sure I’ve necessarily picked up any tricks and tips that would improve my healing, but it’s been interesting to level a paladin NOW versus the many, many years ago that I did it. Many things were grandfathered in for Endy 1.0 after the fact, now I get things at level. Back then, I leveled Endy with no freaking clue what I was doing most of the time and it’s refreshing to do it from scratch.

Now if only you could queue with friends not in your battlegroup, I could probably have some fun times with Askevar 2.0 and Endy 2.0!

Now as to levelling a 2.0. I started with a Paladin, he hit 57 shortly after TBC. Askevar’s warlock (old main) and I hit 70 well into TBC (about 3 or 4 months). I had no freaking clue what was going on but at least I knew that prot was tanking and that Armor > Int/SP on gear :P. We learned a LOT gearing for our first raid of Karazhan (I won’t mention much about the world dragon raid fail, sheesh, 35 level 70’s got wiped by a level 60 boss 4 times). Anyway I began to understand and really look at gearing and spec’ing the toons. I found my very favorite Maintankadin forums more than a year after we hit 70. We were still in Karazhan and T4 content due to scheduling. In that time I levelled a warlock to help out but never even tried to learn how to play it or gear it. I rolled Amber at this point because we were talking about transferring her to horde to get pets/etc for achievements.

Enter Lich King expansion. We hit 80 about a month after release (she hit it earlier since we levelled together on our mains and she has mucho more time than I do as a stay-at-home-mom). Started gearing for Naxx (didn’t really get into Naxx until January). Eventually, after ulduar hit and Venoym was done grinding obscure reps (no, not fully done… just done with the easy ones) I decided to level the warlock who had become the guild joke as the only permanent level 71 in the guild. Hit 80 that morning… head tanked Mimiron that night… with barely 17K hp (had 3! 24 stam gems to even do that… it was sad).

Then the events happened. Almost, but not quite, a guild rift and suddenly we were needing tanks and melee dps. Amber came back front and center since I knew what I could make a paladin do. Levelling I took a strict no tanking approach since I wanted to work on DPS only. I also had the experience of Venoym’s dps and stumbling attempts. The morning that Amber hit 80 she was doing 1900 dps as a level 79… hitting 80 boosted her to just over 2K dps in quest blues and greens. I proceeded to build a makeshift tank set (def cap’d, shield, weapon is all) and grind heroics… I reached all purchaseable gear in less than 3 days of hitting 80 (about 80 or so dungeons and 3 piece T9 on both tank and dps sets). Her dps surpassed Venoym’s paltry 2800 the second day when he was in 232/245 solid gear and she was in average iLevel 220. The third day I reworked Venoym’s dps spec and gearing… btw, don’t trust Elitest Jerks on anything paladin… they are clueless and biased toward Warriors, DKs, and Druids. Much advice is simply stupidly bad.

Anyway, Levelling a second paladin opened my eyes as to what to watch for in levelling ANY other toon. I later on levelled the DK Eskevar (yes, Askevar’s worse-half named on purpose)(+10 DKP if you can name the book reference without looking it up). Given what I had seen in Amber I knew what to look for, the little things… the gearing, stacking hit at early levels to boost DPS, Identifying CD’s to improve survivability, etc. Eskevar sailed from 62 to 80 in almost no time at all, doing 2K dps minutes after hitting 80… So maybe I’m good with melee dps classes (testing that theory on my warrior, level 49 Gumer).

My next fun levelling will be my Female Dranei (Streetwalker) Shaman Prostigoat… but that’s another story for another time… 😛

I did this at one point with a paladin, and I have to say that leveling the paladin the second time around really did make it easier/quicker (not that paladin leveling is all that difficult to begin with!)

The reason for it was that I’d moved and faction changed my original paladin and was regretting it – but I couldn’t afford moving it back. So I started a new one 😛

Other than that I don’t think I’ve levelled two chars of the same kind before. But I can definitely see your point of it being easier/better the second time around.

As soon as I typed that comment, I had a reality check. I’ve gotten complascent the second time around, thinking I know better (and I generally do), and ignoring warning signs. I was overconfident and when I got UK for the first time, in the words of Illidan, I was not prepared.